For those in search for a book that paints a beautiful picture in his or her mind, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer is a perfect gift.
Prodigal Summer brings the reader into the lives of three individuals in a lazy southern village. Deanna Wolfe is a 46-year-old forest ranger lady who lives alone in the mountains. Lusa Landowski is a 28-year-old widow who tries to maintain a farm that's going bankrupt, and Garnett Walker is an eccentric man approaching his eighties who is trying to save dying chestnut trees. The three people lead lives distinct from each other but possess something in common. Their lives, although seemingly not connected in the beginning, take turns that will inevitably bring them to meet as the stories progress. The three character's lives are presented taking turns, little by little. The chapters are titled consistently to let the reader know when the switch to another character's story has occurred. Matching the characters' most important values, the chapters are titled 'Predators,' 'Moth Love,' and 'Chestnuts.'
Kingsolver enjoys making the reader anxious about the advent of the three characters' meeting, and she does it well. With abundant hints of her environmentalist views present throughout the novel, Kingsolver amazes the reader with her immense and accurate knowledge of the wildlife in Southern Appalachia. Subtle clues included in all three characters' stories brings the reader to a finger-snapping realization that the three seemingly completely isolated stories are indeed related and that the characters will meet. She unravels the stories along with more frequent and profound hints. While the suspense grows, she presents vivid and beautiful scenes of the area, giving the reader all the more reason to want to be there.
Slow pacing of the novel does present some problems. Overly descriptive writing in the beginning contributes to a slow start. Also, because all but one of the main characters has interaction with a very limited number of people, the story feels even slower. The lack of humor also makes the story sound a little dry in a few places where it could really help. The most glaring fault is the meeting. When the three stories finally unravel and bring the characters to cross each others' paths, it is sudden and not as exciting as anxiously anticipated throughout the entire book. For most of the book the stories do not seem to be going anywhere; the lives of the characters seem fixed and settled. Then there is an exponential increase in the number of dropped hints towards their meeting. Then they meet. It is nothing dramatic, and the anticipation dissipates.
Immersing and entertaining, a bit disappointing in the end, it is difficult for the reader to fully grasp the morale of the story other than her subtle conservationist views. Entertainment may have been the sole purpose of Prodigal Summer, and if this is true, it succeeds wonderfully.
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